Local Mission Ideas

[Cheetah]

Hi guys, I think this is the right place for this but here it goes anyway:
I'm trying to encourage our church into local mission work in the community. Are there any kinds of ways any of you have found to be effective or good ideas in engaging with the community?
We already have a kind of holiday club for the local children in the summer and something each week for them but it would be good to go out into the local area and do some kind of mission with the residents and people there. The two I can think of are visiting the homeless and handing out leaflets. Does anyone have any suggestions? Perhaps something your church did that you found effective or whatever? It would be great to hear from you guys. Thanks.

[luv1another]

well cheetah our church does community events like free carwashes, sausage sizzles, easter egg giveaways, christmas parcel wrapping, and we go to a small community about 30kms away and have like a mini fair with a bouncy castle, face painting, free drinks and sausage sizzles its lots of fun to give free stuff to people and a lot of them ask why we are doing it and want to give money...we dont accept any money... we also give out refresher packs to people going to the big horse race in town...inside a small plastic bag we include a wet toweletter, mints, a pen and a card saying about jesus dyings for them and stuff with the address of the church and phone number.
oh and they give out free bottles of water at the wheelbarrow race too.
just simple stuff...we always start every outreach with prayer months ahead of time...anything you do should be birthed in prayer.

[Little Shepherd]

I particularly liked the ideas from "Why Men Hate Going to Church" for things like free home repairs and oil changes for the elderly and people who can't afford them.

[semmie]

my campus bible study did something really cool a few years back. we split up and went through the dorms, and offered to take out trash for the students. some of them didn't ask (didn't care), but some asked...and we were able to tell them we just wanted to bless them in a practical way, like jesus would have.

balloon animals and face painting are a hit with kids in the summer (the beach or the park, etc), if you have folks who know how to do it!

can you update us, Cheetah? have you come up with anything since you started this thread two weeks ago?

[Cheetah]

Thanks for all your ideas guys, these are all really good.

can you update us, Cheetah? have you come up with anything since you started this thread two weeks ago?

Yeah, well a lot of the other churches' local mission programmes that I've seen often focus a lot on food related programmes: things like going out and feeding the homeless and those in need. I was speaking to someone about this and his home church would do a "bread ministry" where they would go round people's apartments and just offer free bread and ask if there was anything they would like them to pray about.
The Christian Union at my university does a visiting the homeless every couple of weeks where, overnight, some people will just go round the streets of the city and offer homeless people cups of tea and just talk to them. I haven't been on one of those yet, but I plan on going next time it's on.
As this idea for our church progrsses, God willing there will be more good ideas that people have and I'll keep you updated with any programmes we implement.